So far I have really enjoyed my experience here at Technology & Management Services (TMS), which is a contracting company for the National Energy Technology Lab (NETL). I got the job hearing about it from a friend (Andrea Ware) who went through the PWE program at WVU as well, and is a current employee.
I am in my third week now, and I think I am finally getting settled in. The first week was extremely stressful, but only because I didn't know anyone and didn't know exactly what I was doing. That kind of anxiety is the worst for me. The second week went by very smoothly. I had Monday off because of Memorial Day, so the rest of the week just seemed so much easier.
The question I get asked all the time is, "What exactly are you doing at NETL?" Though I get sick of answering it, it at least beats the question I was getting from the blissfully unknown which was usually, "So, like, are you just going to be a teacher? What can you really do with an English degree these days besides teach?"
Well, I get paid a nicely, get internship credit, and have secured a job for when I graduate, in the worst economical crisis in history. :)
At TMS, I do a ton of different things. Right now we are working on preparing documents for reviewers and NETL regarding the stimulus money that President Obama passed and sorted towards the Department of Energy. On any given day I am summarizing projects, inputting reviewer scores, writing meeting agendas, or QA'ing (Quality Assuring) documents to make sure they are fully prepared for whoever's eyes on which they may land. My job is something different every day, but mainly pertains to working in Microsoft Word and Excel.
I am worried about the internship class because all of the documents I am working on require me to sign multiple non-disclosure and conflict of interest forms. For my portfolio, which apparently needs to be 20 pages of material, I am not sure what I will be able to represent, as all of the information I am working on and detailing is sensitive information. Hopefully, that will all get sorted out and I won't have to worry about it. Surely, there has to be a way around that.
I'm not sure what I can and can not say about the process that these documents go through as I work on them, but I can say that at the end of the process, there is a conference call with very important people. One of us here at TMS has to sign on to a website with all of these people and screen share so that everyone that is in the call can see the same document. They go through the document making decicions about proposals and changes to important information. I listened in on one of these calls today and it was extremely boring. Extremely important, but boring nonetheless. Some of these calls take hours upon hours. Today's call was scheduled for 9:30 - 6pm. One call...all the way through, with one 15 minute break. Luckily for Rachael, my cubicle-neighbor, it ended much earlier than that. I am dreading having to do one of these on my own, but I know that's why they hired me so I can't complain.
If I had to complain about one aspect of the job it is the commute. I wasn't able to find an apartment in time when I got hired, so I decided that I would just commute from home, which is Cumberland, Maryland - an hour away.
Here is my daily schedule:
6a.m. - Wake up on the dot.
6:15a.m. - Wake back up...on the dot.
6:30a.m. - Sleep in the shower.
6:15a.m. - Wake back up...on the dot.
6:30a.m. - Sleep in the shower.
6:45a.m. - Get ready and try to leave by 7.
7:00a.m. - Stop working on my hair, and put my shoes on.
7:15a.m. - Leave my house to get to Morgantown which is exactly 1 hour away.
7:15a.m. - Leave my house to get to Morgantown which is exactly 1 hour away.
8:15a.m. - Get off the exit in Morgantown
8:30a.m. - Arrive at work
9-12p.m - Do whatever my direct boss asks. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes not.
12-12:30p.m. - Lunch, which usually consists of Chick Fil A, if I'm being honest.
12:30 - 4:30p.m. - Work like a bee, or not at all.
8:30a.m. - Arrive at work
9-12p.m - Do whatever my direct boss asks. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes not.
12-12:30p.m. - Lunch, which usually consists of Chick Fil A, if I'm being honest.
12:30 - 4:30p.m. - Work like a bee, or not at all.
4:30p.m. - Leave work on the dot so I can make it home as quickly as possible.
5:15p.m. - 45 minutes later I make it to the interstate (which is only 2 miles away, but the traffic is so bad)
6:15p.m. - Arrive home, and pass out on the bed
9p.m. - Wake up from my evening nap, watch some television
11:30p.m. - Watch The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
11:30p.m. - Watch The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien
12a.m.-3a.m. - Try to go back to sleep and do it all over agian.
I am not sure if it is coming across in the writing here, but I definitely am exhausted every single day of the week. But, I am very excited to have a year of experience under my belt before I graduate next May. I am trying to just stick to my guns and remember that I have a lot of great things coming out of this experience and I shouldn't worry about being exhausted of all things. Knowing me, I think I am going to spend my whole life just being exhausted, no matter what it is that I do.
Hopefully this post makes up a lot of what I should have been writing about for the last couple of weeks. Getting in to the class later than expected, and then working pretty much non-stop the last 3 weeks, I just hadn't found the time to sit down and actually crank out yet another blog post.
I will be writing more as the work progresses and as my challenges increase.
Thanks for providing a nice overview of your workday at NETL.
ReplyDeleteLet me address two related concerns you express in your post.
(1) You mention that you're not sure what you can and can't say in your blog posts, given the confidential nature of the projects you're working on and the non-disclosure forms you've been signed as you work on each one.
In your blog posts, provide as much detail as you describing the PWE types of activities and skills that you're putting to use while leaving out specific details that need to remain confidential. For example, you could probably always describe the rhetorical situation for any document you're working with (it's topic, purpose, and audience) and describe some key decisions you've made to ensure the document meets its purpose and its audience, all while leaving out specific names, data, etc., that need to remain classified. In short, focus on describing the PWE activities you're doing and the PWE decisions you're making rather than describing the specific details of the documents you're working with.
(2) Along the same line, your final portfolio will include a similar amount of "thick description" of the work you're doing so that you're making a clear statement about the PWE skills and knowledge you developed and put to use through the internship. We'll talk later about whether or not it might be possible for me to sign a non-disclosure statement that would allow you to save your portfolio to a CD and to allow me to read the portfolio and then return it to NETL as soon as I finish evaluating it.